THE VIRGINIA WATER HERONRY.
THE lake of Virginia Water is, in a sense, the result of the battle of Culloden. George, Duke of Cumberland, was, like the Duke of Cambridge, not only Commander-in-Chief but also Ranger of several Royal parks and forests. These offices he filled in a very creditable manner. In the New Forest, of which he was appointed Ranger, he was the first to improve the breed of the Forest ponies by bringing thoroughbred sires into the district, one of these being llfarske,' the sire of 'Eclipse,' and as Ranger of Windsor Park he created Virginia Water. It is said that his object in so doing was to find occupation for the additional soldiers whom the King desired to keep with the colours even after the Rebellion of 1745 had been crushed. It is equally probable that their presence suggested such employment. In either case the result was a happy one, and highly creditable to the Duke's good taste. The main valley, then a swampy heath, with two narrow glens running back into the hills, were covered with the shining level of the new lake, which thus became the largest of all the "Surrey Ponds." The designer was so careful to observe the character of the natural lakes of that county, which are for the most part pools collected in shallow reservoirs without either dam or watet fall, that though the temptation to make a cascade was not to be resisted, he hid it round a corner so as to be invisible except when sought, and the lake fills the valley without exhibiting any trace of its artificial origin. Even George IV.'s temples and tea-house make little difference in the wild appearance of the seven miles of its circumference, while the size and beauty of the timber, both native and foreign, which was then planted show the wonderful fertility of the light Surrey soil. Some of the spruce-firs tower to a height of 90 ft., rhododendrons grow as if native to the soil, and the Mediterranean pines have out- grown the prim formality which usually marks the imported conifer in England, and are twisted, broken, and fantastic as if they grew on a slope of the Apennines instead of the side of a Surrey hill. The saying that "all good things go well together " is well illustrated by the charm of this well- established foreign timber in its English environment, and the occasional glimpse of a pair of roe-deer which were long ago introduced into the woods, suggests a link with the forests of Scotland or of the demesne of Fontainebleau. By the end of the third week in April all the larger native
birds are nesting in these woods, and the combination of timber, water, grassy glades, and evergreens attracts them in numbers unequalled anywhere in the neighbourhood of London. It is very doubtful whether in any part of Windsor Forest itself so mach of the life of our resident birds can be seen in the course of a few hours as on the margin of this beautiful lake. Woodpeckers, both of the green and lesser
spotted species, wood-pigeons in flecks, jays, crows, pheasants, a few wild-ducks, and lastly a colony of herons, are all nesting round its shores. At the present time, when the foliage of the deciduous trees is only partly out, and the undergrowth of summer has yet to spring up, these birds are seen more easily and at closer quarters than at any other season The ground between the tree trunks is clear of rank growth, the bracken is dead and beaten flat by winter rains and its young shoots not yet uncurled, the brambles are leafless, the wood- ruff not half a foot high, and the brown carpet of dead leaves only broken by the wild hyacinths and primrose tufts and green arum leaves. The cock-pheasants, which have already learnt that shooting - time is past, stray fearlessly in this open ground, the reds and browns of their spring plumage shining like a bunch of red wallflower blossom spangled with gold. The turf which fringes the eastern arm of the lake is set at intervals with groups and single trees of Oriental pines. In one of these a pair of green woodpeckers have drilled a hole, and, having completed their morning's work of wood-boring, spend the sunny hours of the afternoon in searching for ants'-nests in the turf, where the hot sun and April showers have tempted the emmets to open their galleries to the air. From the head of the eastern arm of the lake, a long grass glade, sot at intervals with ancient thorns, is haunted by another pair of the green woodpeckers, while the call of others is heard at intervals from all parts of the northern wood.
Next to the placid levels of the lake itself this background of high wood is the characteristic feature of Virginia Water. It clothes the southern face of the line of hill which begins at Egham, and forms all the high ground of Windsor Forest. Steep, sheltered from the north and east, and formed of that mixture of light loam and peat which seems to suit every tree alike in the Surrey woodlands, from oaks to rhododendrons, it exhibits every various shade of leaf and foliage, from the tall spruces on the summit of the hill down to the alders, now covered with black tassels and blacker buds, which dip into the lake. Halfway up the slope, and parallel with the water, runs a natural avenue between groves of beech. Every inch of its floor is set with emerald moss, embroidered with fallen beech-nut husks and the red envelopes of the young leaves that have opened. The whole hillside is a natural nursery of young trees. *Under the sycamores hundreds of seedlings a foot high are spreading their leaves to the " yonge sonne " of April, tiny rhododendrons spring unbidden by the side of the peaty ditches in the hollows, and young alders shooting up by the drain-sides have choked the streams with richly odorous tangles of horned-moss, dead leaves, and the delicate debris of the minor vegetation of the wood. On the highest point of the bill - line, facing the columns of the Greek temple which George IV. con- structed from fragments brought from Corinth and Cyrene, is the heronry. The trees in which the birds build are grouped around the head of a coombe leading to the lake. The tiny valley, not seventy yards in length from its rise in the hill- side to where it loses itself in the lake, is an example in minia- ture of the natural formation common to the woodland coombes of Surrey. At the bottom, where the stream soaks into it, lies its tiny alder copse. Above lie groups of wild cherry, now white with blossom, and of seedling pines. At the head of the glen, in a grassy semi-circle which seems the natural theatre for a sylvan play, are three or four feathery birches, tossing their branches like cascades of green drops from crown to foot, while round the upper rim of the hollow are ranged the tall columns of spruces, larches, and pines in which the herons build, and from whose summits they can survey the vast extent of lower country lying to the south, and the lake from end to end, for the grove stands on the promontory which divides the northern from the eastern arm of the mere. Chance enabled us to measure the height of these trees. A single spruce had been uprooted by a storm, and lay prostrate, with the remains of an old heron's nest among its branches. It was 74 ft. in length, and judging by its girth was not the tallest in the grove. One of these trees, partly decayed, was perforated at a height of 30 ft. by a series of holes like the stops in a flute, the successive nesting- places hollowed out in different years by a pair of lesser spotted woodpeckers, whose drumming note was heard in the wood close by. The herons, though some of their young were hatched, were extremely shy, slipping noise- lessly from nest after nest, and disappearing in the wood. Only five returned to circle above the trees, and these were attracted mainly by the incessant " clattering " of a brood of forward young birds in an isolated nest on the hill Young storks as well as young herons use this curious alarm- note, which might perhaps be of service to frighten a cat which climbed to the stork's-nest on a Dutch house, but is much more likely to canoe danger by attracting the notice of visitors to herons in an English wood. The silence and speed with which the old birds, in spite of their size, vanished from off their nests and behind the screen of spruce-tops was re- markable. In this close cover they slipped away without the rustle of a feather or disturbing a single leaf by the stroke of their five-foot wings. The nests, of which we discovered eleven, were all in the loftiest trees, but though spruce-firs were the favourites, others were placed in larches and some in Scotch firs. Large heronries seem unusual in Surrey and the southern counties. At Wanstead Park in Epping Forest the heronry holds fifty nests, and recently numbered sixty- eight. But in Surrey and Kent from ten to fifteen nests seems the usual average. The colony at Chilham Park, near Canterbury, probably exceeds this number ; but at Richmond Park, Virginia Water, -Pinney Ridge in the New Forest, Stag Wood in Woolmer Forest, the numbers have not increased in proportion to the time during which the colonies have been established.
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